


swallow him whole like a pill

by benshaws



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 22:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4763603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benshaws/pseuds/benshaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple of excerpts from a modern AU I never wrote, where the Inquisition is a derelict bar in need of repair, inherited by the Inquisitor. Dorian is a bartender with a drinking problem and Cullen is a ex-war veteran with a morphine addiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	swallow him whole like a pill

“Is this really necessary?” Cullen asks, more than a little despairingly, as Leliana swaps the original jacket Cullen had been wearing for another.

  He eyes the new jacket being held out to him for a moment before taking it in hand.  

“Appearances, as Josephine would say,” Leliana says with the barest hint of a smile as she watches Cullen despondently shove an arm into the jacket sleeve.  

Leliana must have really searched for this, he realises. The jacket she had given him had once been a staple in Cullen’s wardrobe, but for a long time it had been retired to the back of his closet. The item she had given him was an old leather jacket, comfortable, warm and faded. At one point in his life, the jacket had travelled with him everywhere, but now it felt too much like a memento. It was just like Leliana to pick out the one item of his clothing that would make him the most uncomfortable.  

Once Cullen’s dressed, he lifts his arms up slightly to show off his new attire. “Better?”  

“Much,” she answers, pointed and chirpy in a way which tells Cullen she knows exactly what she’s doing. At least this was better than being coddled, Cullen supposes. Somewhat better, anyway.  

“Look, if this is some scheme to make me seem more attractive…” Cullen begins, bemused, as she turns him around to smooth down the shoulders of his jacket. “Well… You know I don’t really buy into getting laid as a coping mechanism, Leliana.”  

Her fingers brush oh so delicately over his shoulders.  

“No,” she says prettily. “We both know what you use as your coping mechanism, Cullen.”

  He turns his head sharply to look at her over his shoulder and, unnerving as ever, she meets his gaze with a level stare. In times like these Cullen longs for the ability to replicate Leliana’s unflinching, stoical pokerface, but, unfortunately, he was condoned to being an open book. Leliana can read his thoughts about /knives/ and /backs/ on his features before he can even open his mouth.  

She shifts, perceptibly. “I’m not staging an intervention here, Cullen, just taking you out for a drink.”

  Cullen sighs and rubs at his eyes. “And /I’m/ not ungrateful for the attention, it’s just-“ He searches for the words. “It seems like a lot of trouble to go to.”  

“For someone like you?” She finishes, gliding around him and picking her coat up off a chair.  

That makes him laugh. It sounds something like a broken, rusty engine trying to will itself into gear. Attractive. “I’d rather not spend the evening picking the scabs off my wounds, either.”  

“All the more reason to drink, then,” She tells him, shrugging on her own coat with a feline smile.

-

“The Inquisition?” Cullen asks once they’re outside the bar, staring pointedly at the sign above the door.  

It’s a typical November evening — cold, and a little damp, and a little miserable. The streetlights reflect off the slick city streets and the smokers huddle in little deposits around the outside of the bar, fumes pouring from their mouths. Somewhere in the city a police siren roars, and it’s call echoes all the way through the city streets.

  There’s always a worry that someone needs help when a siren calls. Cullen pushes the feeling aside.  

He glances back at Leliana, who pulls her coat closer to body to keep off the chill. “An interesting choice of name.”  

“It has an equally interesting story to go with it, I assure you,” Leliana tells him as she pushes open the door. There’s a rush of warm air, and Cullen revels in it for a moment before taking in the Inquisition’s interior.  

The first word that came to Cullen’s mind? Unfinished. With scratched wooden floors, exposed brick walls and a wooden bar that look like it had seen better days, what could be described as vintage-esque might be better described as decrepit.   

Granted, it had some cozy elements: some sunken leather couches crowded around stumpy coffee tables and lit candles dripping wax onto non-matching china plates added some charm, but mainly it looked… incomplete. Like someone had thrown this place together in a couple of weeks.

  “Not what you expected?” Leliana interrupts his thoughts, and Cullen glances sideways at her.  

“No. Not that I really had anything in mind in the first place.”

  Leliana looks like she’s going to reply when she’s distracted by the call of her own name. She looks away and Cullen follows her gaze to where Josephine is walking toward them. The new arrival gathers Leliana up in a hug the moment she is close enough, and Cullen can’t help but notice how tightly Josephine’s hands grip the back of Leliana’s coat.

When Leliana smiles a soft, "Josie,” into the shorter woman’s ear the intimacy of it is enough to make Cullen look away. His gaze gravitates towards the bar, where he falls into the trap of a hungry looking smirk. He startles.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Josephine says, and it takes Cullen a beat to realise she’s addressing him now. He summons up a smile, and returns the hug she gives him gently. Up this close, she murmurs, “It’s been too long, Cullen.”

It shouldn’t be as painful as it is.

“It’s good to see you again,” is what he manages in return, hoping his face isn’t giving away the full extent of his feelings.

Leliana and Josephine both can read his emotions too well, and he’s been psychoanalysed once this evening already. Having both of them on his case would be nothing short of terrifying.

He disentangles himself and nods towards the bar. “First drink’s on me, ladies.”

Their smiles are still a little too knowing, and he’s a little too grateful for that escape. That is, until he actually gets to the bar.

Waiting for him, like a saw scaled viper rasping in the sand, is that smirk.

His stomach churns in nervous knots, as if actually facing a snake rather than a man with a well manicured moustache and a fox-like grin. It feels dangerous.

Cullen has faced much worse than sharp-eyed bartenders, however. The prosthetic attached from his knee downwards can atone to that.

-

“You’ve never listened to Bon Iver?” Dorian asks, as though it were somehow a personal affront.

Cullen just drinks his beer and shakes his head. Immediately, Dorian is clambering off the couch, downing the last dregs of his beer as he does so. The bottle gets abandoned on the little coffee table stationed to the left of Cullen’s knees and the movement makes him notice the growing collection building there. Already, three bottles had been emptied and pushed to one side. Cullen was still on his first - the rest were all Dorian’s.

Cullen watches him cross the room.

“Let me guess, you are a slave to the top 40,” Dorian supposes while stepping over a box of vinyls. He glances back in Cullen’s direction, and his eyes take a top-to-bottom sweep of his body that leaves Cullen feeling hot. “Or, have some delightful soft spot for awful guitar heavy classic rock.”

Cullen leans back in his seat and watches Dorian turn to go rummaging through a cupboard. “To be honest, I don’t really listen to a lot of music.”

Dorian makes a displeased noise that comes out like a tut. “Why am I not surprised?” He drawls, plucking a vinyl among the stacks and kicking the cupboard shut with his foot. He smooths his hand over the jacket sleeve as tenderly as you would touch a newborn child.

“Luckily, I am here to supply some education,” Dorian says with a smile, stepping over to his vinyl player. With the same sensitivity as a moment ago, he pulls the vinyl from it’s packaging.

“For all my egotism, I can guarantee this album will change your life, even if just a slice of it,” Dorian tells him, laying the vinyl carefully in place.

“That’s a large statement.”

“And one I would not over exaggerate,” Dorian says with truthfully, leaving Cullen smiling.

He drops the needle and the vinyl crackles to life, the noise suffocating under the sounds of the open fire. Dorian edges the volume up with his thumb and then sits down on the rug in front of the fireplace.

Cullen tugs his legs up on the sofa, laying them out in front of him. There’s a soft swell of guitar, and Cullen’s eyes are on Dorian, who’s sat upright with his arms wrapped around his knees, his shadow stretching and wobbling on the carpet.

Cullen can trace the recognition on Dorian’s features, how he knows when every drum beat kicks in, the brass, the riffs. It plays out like a symphony. The first song swells to an end and Dorian grins at him then falls back, arms spread out like the caricature of an angel.

Cullen swallows and lifts his chin and closes his eyes, letting the music fill him up. All the while, he can hear Dorian breathing.

There’s a track, with a soft, plinky guitar that makes Cullen open his eyes, and leaves him blinking at the firelight.

He turns his head and squints through unadjusted eyes, stumbling on the shimmering photograph of Dorian, laid with his back pressed firmly into the rug, a hand laid out on his stomach, and his eyes shut. He’s red cheeked and silent, the flames dancing behind him and the wood burning and breathing, quiet and steady.

And at once I knew I was not magnificent.

The singer chimes, and the music builds, and Cullen is watching the shadows Dorian’s eyelashes cast on his cheeks.

Cullen wants to do something stupid.

Would Dorian tastes like cigarette ash or wood smoke?

Dorian opens his eyes, with no sense of urgency, and tips his head in Cullen’s direction. Cullen feels his heart clench.

He had barely moved a finger or a toe, had barely breathed, to inform Dorian of what he was going to do, what he had planned to do, wanted to do, but Dorian was staring at him nonetheless. The thought was in his head and the next second Dorian was looking straight at him, Cullen the wall and Dorian the paint stripper.

Cullen sits up and stares at his hands, feeling like a fool. He’s as red as Dorian now, and not close enough to the fire to use it as an excuse.

And at once I knew I was not magnificent.

When he next looks up Dorian is reaching for his cigarettes off the mantle piece. Cullen drinks as Dorian opens up a window, leaning out and pulling steady drags from his cigarette.

Cullen envies Dorian in that moment, wishing he had something to do, rather than watching Dorian’s shoulder blades through his shirt and being painfully aware of the lyrics for the next song.

Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t.

“Can I try?” Cullen asks, and Dorian doesn’t so much as startle, but he does inhale a little hard. In a shirt that tight, Cullen can see the movement of his ribs.

Dorian turns his head back toward Cullen, not enough that he’s looking at him, but enough that it shows that he’s listening.

“Try what?” He asks, blowing smoke toward the dark horizon and the burning lights of house windows, street lights and cars.

“Your cigarette.”

Dorian turns at that, and leans his hip against the wall. “I am a bad influence on you,” Dorian says in a way which is gleeful, but not without an edge. Cullen is getting tired of the double entendres. “What will lady Cassandra say? You won’t get grounded, will you?”

“Haha,” Cullen says drily. “I am a grown man.”

“Sometimes I forget,” Dorian says wickedly, pushing himself off the wall and walking toward Cullen. He takes his place back on the sofa beside him. “It is so easy to.”

Carefully Cullen takes the cigarette from Dorian’s outstretched hand, and it can’t be helped when their fingers brush and fumble.

“Your first cigarette at forty, I’m almost proud.”

Cullen looks over at him. “I’m thirty two.”

“You say that like it makes it better,” Dorian smirks, and Cullen barely refrains from rolling his eyes.

He puts the cigarette against his lips and takes a drag, letting out a mouthful of smoke a moment later. Cullen chokes and Dorian laughs, plucking the cigarette back from his fingers as Cullen waves it at him.

Cullen thumps his chest a couple of times. “That is dreadful. Ugh-”

He blinks a few times. “You willingly put that in your body?”

“Correction, a nicotine habit started in my early youth puts this in my body,” Dorian says, gesturing to the cigarette already hanging between his lips. Dorian takes another drag, a trail of smoke following him as he stands up again.

He gestures to Cullen’s drink. “Do you want another?”

Cullen frowns, and shakes his head. “I’m good.”


End file.
